Has anyone ever found anything interesting in a wall or in a basement or crawlspace? All I ever find is trash from the bulders (cups, etc.)

oh yes.

artifacts of all manner, it's really too bad i've no formal historic or period training.

i'm probably bullin' and jammin' my way through a wealth of material for such sorts....

I was running some network cable in my attic and found a letter from WWII sent to a private in the Army.

At a neighbor's house I found some newspaper that had adhered to one of the wall studs; there a continuation of an article that discussed the post-war economy. Farther down on the paper were legal ads, dated sometime just after WWI.

Also found a wrapper from a toilet paper roll, and a chewing-gum wrapper.

I have yet to find that evasive $10,000 gold note or that rare $20 piece

We did a rewire on a 1903 Victorian and found a treasure map in the wall. The homeowner was planning to figure it out. There was also a homemade glider very intricate with lots of small pieces, bows in the wings etc. The wings were covered with some sort of animal hide that was transparent enough to see the wing structure. Unfortunatley the hide had a lot of holes in it.

Some medicine cabinets have a slot in the back panel so you can push your spent razor blades (not Atra cartriges, mind you) through them and into the space in the wall.

Of course this only works if you have HOLLOW stud-n-plaster walls!

My medicine cabinet has the slot and that is how I dispose of the razorblades I use for cutting things like recording tape, packing tape, stripping thin wire, etc. after they get dull.

It's safer than putting that crap in the garbage bag (which then might potentially slice through and cut the garbageman).

I wonder if, when they tear down this building, the demolition crew is going to wonder what all those rusty razor blades are doing inside the walls!!!

Dead mice?

Have heard that construction people will leave a can of beer in the wall for the next guy that does a remodel years later. But I don't think beer will last that long before turnibg skunky.

I have found old newspapers in my house, my dads house is old farm house we found some jars with money nothing large just change.

When someone remodles my house they are going to find alot of toys. I have 4kids and everytime i change a wall or something they seem to throw in a couple toys. Had to tear one wall back out my little girl threw a full bottle of milk in the hole i hadn't patched yet.

This was in the ceiling, not the walls, but...
I did a remodel at a local university a few years back. The guy I was working with found a bag of pot in a 4 square box in the ceiling.

OH! I don't know how I forgot this one! When I remodeled my kitchen about six months ago I found a diamond ring under a kitchen cabinet! I was in the attic dropping romex down to my dad through the wall, and he saw something shiny on the ground in the corner. We still have it, but haven't got it appraised yet.

I was doing a rewire out in the country a couple of years ago.
Up in the roof I found a whole heap of papers pertaining to the Temperance Society of New Zealand, most of them dated 1899-1901.
I asked the tenant about these and she said that she had no idea they were up there.
I gave them to the local Museum, they couldn't believe what I had found.

we found a pack of old trojans during a renovation once, the older version that actually came in a tin enclosure

we really razed the owner about it too, he already had 7 kids....

I have been at this for more than 28 years and have found all kinds of old bottles,45 records, tools, and newspapers that date back to the '30s. Two stories stick out though.
We were doing a kitchen remodel. The owner had two cats that were a pain in the ... The ceiling was opened only on one side of the kitchen to make fishing the cable easier without damaging the rest of the ceiling. Well as these jobs go, one of the cats disappeared, and the owner was really peeved and blamed us. Two weeks later the owner calls me and says the recessed light is making a very strange sound, as this is the first time I had heard that, I went to investigate. Long story short, the cat had crawled up into the ceiling and was laying (just about dead) by one of the high hats, and as the fixture heated up the cat would make this horrendous sound. The cat lived.

On another job, we were doing demo and the carpenter said that the 'jerk' who worked there before used too many nails to put the job together and it made his job hell. In the walls there was a name and date of the work. It was 1959, and my fathers name. It was very cool!!!

Pierre

I was working in a casino boxing arena ceiling, where a guy I was working with found a rat carcass suspended in mid-air in a spider web. He sure got wigged out over the gnarly spider webs between two huge ducts over his head, I thought the guy was going to panic and hurt himself trying to get out of there!

I'm so glad this story had a happy ending. I know from my own cat just how inquisitive they can be about places which are not normally accessible.

I've been given boxes of old records that I've come across in attics, which is great for an avid collector like myself. I also discovered an old 9-inch 1940s TV abandoned in an atiic some years ago -- Again a great find for a vintage equipment enthusiast!

Last year I found some dusty pages from a late 1940s newspaper, which made some interesting reading over my lunchtime sandwiches. One column was a story which had just emerged about a serviceman's bravery during WWII. Fascinating reading.

Less pleasant finds include tracing a horrible smell to the remains of a large rat, its jaws still around the 240V cable into which it had apparently bitten.

lol Pierre ! a catastrophy

Free stuff is always good.

So Paul, did you get the TV set working?

Afraid not, in this case. There had been too much damage to it to make it worth trying to do a full repair, but at least I salvaged some hard-to-find parts to keep other vintage equipment going.

In a bedroom remodel the wall common with the bathroom I found an old medicine bottle in the wall cavity. No idea how it got there. It was the kind with a cork and a hand written label with a fountain pen and it was half full.

You know how in old houses they used area linoleum on the floors. They use alot of newspaper underneath for insulation and sound. This keeps the papers nice and flat and also clean. I found tons of NY Times and others from the late 1800's through the 30's. I found the cover story of the Hindenburgh disaster. It was so cool and eerie at the same time. I still have it.

Just did a walk thru on an old house that is bieng remodeled. Former owner lost house after bieng arrested for drug dealing. We had to call the cops back when we found more bags of white powders and green leaves-- over 50 when I left. The cops were still there and the drug dog was still going nuts.
Looks like this job will delayed.

A loaded "RG 22" pistol (a cheap cast aluminum revolver that sprayed as much lead out the cylinder to forcing cone gap as went out the barrel) wrapped in a shop rag in a wall with no access.
"#10 Downing Street" (the address of the British Prime Minister) written in 2' high letters inside a wall.
A hollowed out elephant's foot (complete with toenails) in an attic. Everyone should have one of these ...S

Kind of related, these posts jogged a few memories. Opened up an outside panel and it had a black substance on the buss. Looked up on the main lugs and there was a frog across the two phases and he had burned up so much it was just a skeleton. Also found a dead cat under a house and then when i went to crawl out of the space that was only about a foot and a half, there was a huge spider about the size of the palm of my hand. Thought about it for a long time and just had to ease out on my back with my face looking right at him wondering if he'd jump on me.

one of project i was working not too long ago one of the apt complex, i was rewiring the apartment and went in the attic and found old kenorse lamp with refector and old oil stove. yeah this is oil stove it do burn on diesel fuel or kenoese for fuel for stove and bear in mind this is a hevey sucker this weight about little over 300 pounds!!! don't ask me how it got up in the attic in first place and few old papers from late 18 th and early 19 centenry newpapers . and found old screwdriver too it rather look odd shape .


merci , marc

Oh, by the way, the other day I was at work and dropped my inch and a half KO with the big bolt down the wall and tried everything to get it back but couldn't. If one of you guys happens to run across it, I would appreciate it if you brought it back.

UPDATE
The house I refered to on my previous post now looks like swiss cheese. Tha cops were there for 3 days looking thru the walls and tearing them down. They also found several stolen guns, knives and hidden money. (Why didn't I find it first ) Guess the bank will have a long time before this place is ready to be fixed up for sale. Place still has police tape on it.

Remodeled old house in the country and found ancient doll. Rag style, with ceramic head, hands, feet. I always stick magazines and coins etc. in the walls of all my jobs...

It's always fun to find old newspapers in the walls....to read while you rest a bit.

When I removed the old bathroom sink at home the idiot who had installed it wedged a roll of 1970s or 1980s sales circular from some long-defunct chain dept store to keep the sink straight against the wall..

While most of the pages were stuck together there was one page that had a lineup of TV sets -- it was sort of interesting to see 13" black and white TV sets with the dial tuners along side 19" COLOR TV sets with push button tuning boasting REMOTE CONTROL!!!

old beer cans!first can made in late 1934(krueger beer)ihave a collection of several hundred vintage,valuable steel beer cans.several are valued at $1000.00 plus u.s.
found many of them on remodel jobs and it grew into a hobby.
once found a 4'square chunk of concrete under a house i was remodeling.the homeowner said it was her sister who died as an infant 50 years ago.the entombed her under the house?i had to have a priest do an exorcism before my helper would go back under the house.that was a bit strange come to think of it.

I found an empty bottle of vodka in the ceiling of the ICU isolation room in a hospital I did some work in.

A while back, (around July, 2000) I ended up on a job where someone wanted to turn an old convalescent home, which had been turned to offices,.. into a private school. The original structure dated to the 50's & every do-it-yourselfer in Los Angeles county must've been in this place. anyways, the fun started right from the beginning, all done in steel flex, (not a single ground in the place though), old Zinsco subpanels, & LOTS of wiring that seemed to go nowheres.. I opened every recept, switch & light in that place, I'd tug the wires trying to find the other end & nothing... I'd hear the wires moving, but where was the ^&%$*%$ other end! I finally came to a room that had the plaster removed on one side & noticed 2- 4/0 boxes about eye level that were buried on the opposing side... Turned out that these were for the old "reading" lights from the conv hospital days & everything in each room junctioned there. Soooo, to avoid having to pay for one of us electricians to come in & rework things the right way, they stuffed each box full of the perfect insulator, The LA Times! dating back to Feb 1977! A couple of them had signs from burning, indicating to me that the building was still standing simply because of a lack of oxygen in those boxes... We finally talked the General & Property owner into gutting everything & starting fresh vs. the band-aid they thought they were going to get away with

Found an old wooden yard stick,in mint condition,house is only about 50 yrs old,did they actually use these back then?

A while back, i was watching a TV show about some people who bought an old home with intent to restore it eventually. they spent their life savings on the home, and had nothing left after buying it. soon they noticed that the roof had severe leaks and there was alot of structural damage. Even though they did not have the money to fix it, they had a contractor come to inspect the damage. he started tearing down the plaster and discovered that the walls were insulated with old movie posters. there were thousands of movie posters in the walls of the house. even though over half of them were destroyed, they were able to make enough money by auctioning them off to pay for an entire renovation of the home.

I don't have anything nearly as cool as some of you. But I did find an unopened can of coke, I think from the 70's. Some how (the seal must have been barely cracked) all the liquid had evaporated out.

Three things come to mind:

I once found two rolls of pennies in the attic of an old school. Milk money? There were several steel pennies among them. They started my 12 year old son on a coin collecting hobby.

I once found an old "Cracker Jack" doll in another attic. I gave it to the new homeowner, and she about cried. It seems she had lost her favorite doll at age 7, it was just like this one! Kismet! She loved her new house after that.

Just last month, I ran across some old mildewed books in a basement. My wife likes old books, so I gave them to her. One of them was 180 years old. Another one was only 80 years old, she gave to her sister. It was a primer on reading, and her sister is starting a new job as an elementary school teacher. Sister loved it.

Do you guy collect knob and tube parts? The tubes can be used for final honing of your knives. Haven't found any use for any for the other parts yet.

Earl

String em through your garage and scare people.

Years ago I was working in a boys juvinile detention center (for lack of the proper name). We were working in the areas where the residents were allowed to be. While working in the suspended ceiling I came across a pair of handcuffs, after picking them up I looked down from the ladder to see a resident looking up at me with a big smile on his face. I put the cuffs back where I found them and replaced the ceiling tile, and moved on. Wonder what the boys had in mind...
Rick

I still have one! I also have one of those 4-piece folding yardsticks, lovely wood and polished brass hinges.

They're quite handy in places where a steel tape won't stay put.

I found a pair of old boots(with wooden soles0, Carpet bag and round trip tickets from new Holland Pa to Cape may Nj. under the stairs of a local hardware store.
Also, help carry out boxes of books for a journeyman I was working for years ago. He later showed me what he was after. He had discovered 1 of 2 dictionaries from the revoloution. It was in old English, the an thou etc. valued @ $10,000. If he had the set they were worth $30,000.

Ob

i found a 25 year old wiggy. and it still worked. i use it today.

We can carry on from here
Please don't get too "personal"

[This message has been edited by electure (edited 02-24-2006).]

I once found a bunch of razor blades in a wall I was busting up, wondered what the heck that was about until someone explained the hole-in-back-of-the-cabinet thing Sven mentioned.
One house I didn't find anything interesting in the walls, some unpleasent surprises in the cielings though! Taking a break from electrical work I was helping a friend and contractor tear 3/4" ply off the cieling, it was coated with a nice layer of rat, err excriment. In that same cieling I found a pair of unprotected #2 wires (not a surprise with the way this garage was wired when it was turned into a living space- unprotected THHN used for everything) what WAS a surprise was that the wires were hot, after the meter was pulled! We installed a new service, and left the old one, that ran inside a soffit for about 50' so I never did get to see exactly how they did it.
Same house, fishtape gets hooked exploring some old empty conduits, so I went into the attic, and saw several of those glue-type mouse traps, with some nicely mummified mice still stuck in them, thankfully they were past the decay phase.

Was working in a "side" attic and found a bunch of old Nabob vanilla extract bottles. I mentioned it to my dad (who's in his 80's) and he remembered when he was a kid in the 30's that the guy that owned the house was an alcoholic. Never did get to take any of the bottles as the owner I was working for peered into the attic to see how I was doing and spotted them.....and never offered me even one of them

I was re-insulating my own attic and saw 2 boxes in the corner. I was hoping it was money! No luck. One box contained a bunch of old receipts from the 30's, the other box contained a bunch of little girl's "treasures" from the 40's. Cut outs from magazines, valentine cards, etc. This little girl is now in her 60's and still in the area and I've been meaning to give them to her....this thread just reminded me.

My dad was doing work for a neighbour some years ago and they came across a tin can up in the ceiling... They opened it and found a brass watch with Russian writing on it sealed in the can...

I was doing work for another neighbour a couple years back and found a little home-made clay pipe for smoking weed hidden up in the ceiling...

A.D

Just last month I was taking out an interior chimney in my mothers house. The chimney ran through the linen closet, so I had to remove the shelving. I'm pulling apart the wood, and I find a little admission ticket, the kind you might get issued to get into any sort of local carnival or fund-raiser.

I go to pick it up (and bend it in the process, of course ) thinking that because of how new it looks, it must be something left by the last owners before my family moved in in '89.

Then I read the date: Friday, October 31, 1924.

Not much, but sure neat because I wasn't expecting it.

-John

Foung some circa 1920's newspapers during a remodel/rewire I was working on in Kenosha a few years ago. The H.O. was going to see if the historical society wanted them.

Found an (empty) pack of smokes under the insulation in my house - circa 1934 or so. And to seal the rafter/studwall area, they had cut down shipping boxes and recycled the cardboard. Saw several with the NRA (National Recovery Administration)logo and "...we do our part" slogan.

Of course, according to the (now grown) children of the previous owner, the 3rd owner back was the City Clerk, and supposedly had hidden "shoeboxes full of cash" within the house.

The only paper I've found so far has been pages of the Chicago Tribune from December 1943 that they used to stuff several junction boxes before they were plastered over...

[This message has been edited by DougW (edited 02-25-2006).]

Let's see...

In a craftsman-style house (like the one in Mr. Holland's Opus), I found a soda bottle under the attic floor. It had "Cola-Cola Bottling Works, Washington, D.C." embossed (raised, actually) on the bottom. It wasn't the wasp-waist style like now, it was straight-sided.

Also, I found an intact (except for the filament, which had been the up-and-down zig-zag kind) Edison-base bulb, with the pointy tip, under a house. I could just barely make out the words "National Mazda" printed on the side.

We have a small collection of various old wine bottles (evidenced by the grapes raised around the bottle) and various apothecary-type bottles, not screw-topped, obviously to be sealed with corks.

I have found a few tools, mostly screw-drivers, Channelocks, a hammer or two, and recently an almost-new pair of Kleins, complete with the thick red replacement handles. No power tools, though. A couple of lighters, one in a pack of fresh cigarettes.

I gave the cigarettes back to my helper, but kept his lighter. hey, he's gotta feel the pain to learn, right?



Me-owch!



Magnets, Gunther, magnets.

Larry, some day some lucky stiff will open the wall where I dropped my pliers. He'll also find the magnet I tried to use to fish them out!

John,
I feel your pain.
A couple of years ago I dropped a brand new pair of Klein angle-type diagonal cutters down the back of a wall oven cavity while working up in a roof-void.
I could see them down at floor level and even managed to hook them out with a length of catenary wire, but as I was lifting the hooked wire out it turned and the cutters fell off, only to drop to the floor and roll under the oven unit.
The oven unit was built in to the wall and there was no way that I was going to tear the cabinets apart for a pair of side-cutters.

I was in a VERY tight attic with some VERY nasty loose insulation. I was scooping and throwing the insulation out of my way & my wedding ring flew off my finger. I dug around in that tight, nasty attic for an hour looking for it...no luck.

Dave

Wall cavities are rare here, but even in solid brick walls you can find newspapers. Often when there are big holes people stuff them with paper and then plaster them over, in order to save plaster.
Floors are a great source for stuff too. The typical Vienna floor is a typical wood floor with beams and 1" subfloor, but some more layers on it. Atop of the first subfloor you get a layer of "insulation", basically sand, mixed with everything they had around. That layer can be up to 12" thick. In that debris fill I found newspapers from the beginning of WWI, small bottles (one half full with antique bronze paint), lit matches the ton (pink dyed wood), even some unlit (with yellow heads), the weirdest thing a pair of ragged canvas shoes, just like red converse.

Well, I found some old newspapers, an old bottle or two, BUGS, supposedly a dead cat, ( I didn't stick around for that job. I just left.) There was once a pack of old girly playing cards. You know the type with the old cheesecake pictures. I found in an attic once an old latern that looked like it came off a a Navy ship. Never did find out if it is or not. I can post the picture here if you want to.

Well, I think I got you all. I was on a remodel of a building that the local YMCA bought next door to add some office space, anyway, there was a 3' dropped ceiling that we used for a chase. I got up my ladder to go into this just opened space to look for a route for my pipe run, and just as I put my hand on the joist a box fell onto my head.

There was dust all over me, in my hair, face and I breathed in as I was startled, it got into my lungs. I was coughing badly, and I couldn't see to get off the ladder. I froze right there and I got covered. I finally wiped my face off and came down the ladder still coughing up a storm and grabed the box that hit me and turned it over. It read
" timothy boy remaines April 1906"

Yup, it was ashes from some kid's creamation. The building next door use to be a funeral home years ago,